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Maneki Neko

05/09/2007

Lovely Lucky Cats.

Quirky and kitschy, traditional but also a great little gadget. I love the superstitious japanese culture of happiness & good luck charms.

Japanese Maneki Neko, the beckoning cat, brings fortune, welth and good luck to it’s owner. Usually the lucky cat holds a couple of attributes like a red collar and a bell, and almost all hold a gold coin. You have plastic ones on batteries endlessly beckoning fortune in.

Some believe, the longer the paw the bigger the happiness, so you can find silly Maneki’s with a real long arm. The “beckoning” is probably loosely based on a cat’s washing gestures…

too long armed Maneki Neko

The asian gesture of beckoning is quite opposite to the western, holding your hand palm out, beckoning downwards instead of our way of beckoning “upwards”…

Maneki Neko brings fortune and prosperity, so you can often see them in stores, businesses, pachinko ♥ parlors and other merchant and moneymaking places. They are often made as piggy-banks as well.

Put Maneki Neko on a little red pillow or cloth in a prominent place, mine sits triumphantly on top of my desk. It makes me happy every time I see it, so the luckbringing works just fine…

ancient portrait of Maneki Neko
on a japanese woodblock print,
around 1850.